Unofficial Gail Simone week. New Wonder Woman, new Secret Six, old Birds of Prey, Catwoman, ‘Mazing Man, and Starman.
Employee’s Pick
[DC] Birds of Prey #56-61
Writer: Gail Simone
Penciler: Ed Benes
The beginning of Simone’s defining run on the title, collected in the trade paperback, Of Like Minds. It’s an odd start from someone who bemoaned the treatment of women in comics before breaking into the field herself. Two issues in, both of Black Canary’s legs are broken and she’s handcuffed to a bed. All this at the hands of a new, male villain who’s set up as a credible threat to both Canary (martial arts) and Oracle (computer hacking). It’s a feint, though. Obvious, in hindsight. Oracle, BC, and new teammate Huntress overcome the threat without any Bat-Assistance. It’s a clinic in how to knock women down so they can rise up and overcome, as opposed to knocking them down for its own sake or the benefit of a male character. More impressive than the plot are the little things Simone throws in, uniquely female reactions that set the Birds apart from Superguys more than anatomy could ever hope to. Simone characters have an almost intimate relationship with food. They love to eat, in quantity and quality, and they love to share their food and feelings. Her characters also tend to be happy, without being content. They struggle, they hurt, but for the most part, they win in the end. That they had to work for it makes the victory all the sweeter.
Hard to believe this is Benes here. His style isn’t wildly different from then to now, but the lack of crosshatching here makes a world of difference. This is kinda nice, whereas I can’t stand his current output. Simple works better for him, though I can understand if he wanted to move from this quasi-animated style to a faux-realistic look.
New-Type Books
[DC] Wonder Woman Vol. 3 #25
Writer: Gail Simone
Penciler: Bernard Chang
Aaron Lopresti’s back next issue, right? Right? OK, good. Chang’s not horrible, but much of this issue is rushed, which, y’know? Odd for a fill-in artist. When he’s able to slow down, he’s fine. It’s of no consequence, as Simone brings her A-game, filling pages with laughter and hugs and violence. All the things that make a comic great. Wonder Woman battles the Queen of Fables, apparently an old foe of hers, who thinks Wondy is her nemesis, Snow White. I can see the resemblance. Radiant beauty, people and animals alike love her… doesn’t get on well with dwarves, though.
We also get a mockup of a Wonder Woman film, which figures to be the complete opposite of the upcoming animated movie. The evil Queen was in charge of production, and it’s the sort of film you’d expect someone who hates Wonder Woman would make. I wonder how other villains would portray their respective nemeses.
[DC] Secret Six Vol. 4 #2
Writer: Gail Simone
Penciler: Nicola Scott
A double dose of Simone this week. It’s almost overwhelming, as she tops an excellent issue of Wonder Woman with her effort here. Catman vs. Batman. Believe the hype. Thomas Blake occupies the Big Bad Bat while the other four members of the Six (one plus four… hrn. Math hard.) break into Alcatraz, which has been turned into a prison for supervillains. Not sure why they’re using that instead of a fictional surrogate. I guess Blackgate blew up or something a while back, but comic book prisons are practically prefabricated. There’s a new one in the Marvel U about once a year, specially designed to deal with supercriminals. Alcatraz is Alcatraz, exceptional by real life standards, but not much better at holding supervillains than anywhere else.
The interplay between team members is what makes this series great. Ragdoll snarking at Scandal, Bane trying to replace Vandal Savage as a father figure, Deadshot shaking his head at it all, and Catman’s not-so-internal struggle between good and evil. Next issue: the team face a horde of supervillains out to kill them. This is a recurring problem for them, something they should really have looked at.
Back Issues
[DC] Catwoman Vol. 3 #50
Writer: Will Pfeifer
Penciler: Pete Woods
I’ve always liked Catwoman. As a kid, I’d pretend she gave up crime, hooked up with Batman, and they lived happily ever after. This without having read any Earth-2 stories. I’ve always preferred heroes to villains, and the more honorable sorts to those who have no problem killing people here and there. I like to find the good in people and see it brought forth to dominate their nature. Villains can turn good, and stay good, if they’re not too far gone to start. Thieves are perhaps the most romantic of all criminals, the easiest to forgive, to excuse. Even without eschewing lawbreaking they can be seen as heroic. Maybe they’re a Robin Hood type, maybe stealing’s the only way they can survive, maybe they only target evil people who don’t deserve their riches. Catwoman’s used all those excuses at one time or another, as well as the thrill of breaking through security, of inconveniencing but not seriously hurting people in order to challenge herself. It’s easy to get behind that with a little fudging; nevermind whether she steals the item or not, focus on the challenge of attempting the theft. Next thing you know, you’re rooting for her to evade police, sell her stolen goods for a huge profit, and retire to the south of France. Or go right back out and steal again, and again, allowing you to live vicariously through her exploits, though you would never dare attempt such yourself.
I know I wouldn’t, and if she stole from me, I wouldn’t see the romance in it, wouldn’t hope she evaded capture, wouldn’t be happy to learn Batman let her go with a stern lecture and a slap on the wrist (or some other area). But this is fiction, I like Selina, and she’s more or less redeemed herself, turned from villain to hero. This issue, Pfeifer asserts that no, she didn’t. Not voluntarily. Zatanna pops up, tells her she magicked Selina into goodness at some nebulous point in the past, and pops out. It’s terrible. I’m trying to keep an open mind about how this plays out in future issues, how the whole story unfolds, but this first issue on its own is insulting. To readers and writers alike. Selina claims she doesn’t know why she became a hero, as though Ed Brubaker gave her no believable motivation, as though she never really cared for the East End, never had to fight the temptation to go back to stealing for its own sake, never wanted to help or protect people. Nope. Magic.
Not sure how this fits with Pfeifer’s opening arc, where he has Selina struggle to choose between keeping up her hero gig and throwing in with the bad guys to save herself and her loved ones. Maybe the idea was she never truly waffled, that her plan was always to turn on the baddies, but she sure seemed set on going bad before Claydude offered to help. Left on her own, without the bad guys fighting amongst themselves, she realistically had no chance. She’s had questionable morals throughout the series. If she were magically turned good, why didn’t she go further? Doesn’t have to all happen at once, but she shouldn’t have backslid so much all this time. There’ve been far more jarring reversals treated as believable; after fifty issues of this series and however much of previous series this magic change is supposed to have encompassed, she still wasn’t fully a hero. That’s ample time. Maybe this’ll be one of those stories that ends better than it starts, but I don’t buy the retcon. I don’t see the need for it, don’t believe any other writer intended it, and can’t see how it fits into continuity.
Only two things keep me from trashing the issue in disgust. Pfeifer’s previous six issues and the fact that I knew about this retcon years before I read the issue itself. I was prejudiced against it, and while the story doesn’t seem to support the retcon any better than I’d heard, I have to wonder how much I’m seeing because I want to. There’s also the fact that most people speak well of Pfeifer’s Catwoman. Either they’re wrong, or it gets better, and every issue but this one leads me to believe it gets better.
[DC] ‘Mazing Man #4
Writer: Bob Rozakis
Penciler: Stephen DeStefano
More light comedy. Despite early appearances, it seems this won’t be turning into any sort of superhero book. It’s an ensemble comedy where one of the players happens to be a superhero, except not really. He has no villains, little crime of any kind to thwart, and hardly does anything exceptional except in the sense that weirdness is exceptional. It’s like if you had a friend who wore a costume all the time and called himself a superhero, and also your life was a sitcom. It got off to a nice enough start, but I’m afraid, barring any changes, I’ll have to call this what it is: pablum. Inoffensive, mildly enjoyable, lacking in substance.
This issue, Guido gets a car, Guido’s car gets stolen, and we look in on a typical day at work for KP, a dentist’s secretary. Maze is around, being Maze. Kinda fun, kinda funny, ultimately forgettable.
Trade
[DC] Starman Vol. 4: Infernal Devices
Writer: James Robinson
Pencilers: Tony Harris (issues 29-33, 35 & 37), Mark Buckingham (issues 33 & 34), Steve Yeowell (issues 34 & 35), Dusty Abell (issue 38)
Books like this are hard to review. I want to stop at the end of each issue – each chapter, if you will – and savor what I’ve just read. But I don’t have savoring time. That’s for later, some nebulous future time when I can revisit this. And that’s good. There’s little point in buying – no point in owning – comics if you aren’t going to read them twice. This volume bears a second reading and then some.
As noted in my review of Times Past, this is the fifth volume if you go by when they were published, but chronologically, for in-story events, it’s fourth and should be read before the official "fourth" volume. Infernal Devices collects issues 29-35, 37 & 38 of the regular series, 36 having never been collected. Really, the trades aren’t worth bothering with. Uncollected issues, spoiled storylines… It’s better treatment than many nineties series got, but you’re better off tracking down the back issues or getting the hardcover Omnibuses (Omnibi?), which collect everything in order.
It’s funny to say I wouldn’t buy this. It’s absolutely the sort of trade I’m reluctant to take back to the library, that I want a copy of to call my own. And yet… it’d be a waste of money. You can’t get the whole series this way, and while the missing issues are all part of the hit-and-miss Times Past flashback deal that ran intermittently throughout the series, I’d still rather have them than not. So I wouldn’t buy it, and I don’t recommend it, but I will own these issues in some form someday, and so should you if you have ever found or ever do find enjoyment in James Robinson’s Starman.
The big spoiler from Times Past, without giving too much away, is a romance between Jack and a certain lady. It was extremely slow burn in the first three volumes, then treated as established in one of the stories collected in Times Past. I suppose, ultimately, it’s a wash, as the romance takes a leap forward in this volume anyways, eschewing the slow buildup with partly offscreen advancement. Not what I was expecting. Think I missed or forgot a story somewhere. All the more reason to buy the whole series. So many little things that are easily forgotten, even when you’re expecting everything to be important later, as it tends to be with this series. The romance is a major part of this volume, running through all the stories. Jack’s fallen hard for this girl, and she for him. Not sure what to think of her yet. Is she simply "the girlfriend," or a strong addition to an already rich supporting cast? She doesn’t feel at all shoehorned into Jack’s life, but I’m not sure I like her so much as I don’t dislike her.
I hate The Mist. In a good way. She’s become so utterly, diabolically evil. At this point, I’d have a hard time swallowing a redemption arc. Forgiveness I could see, but forgetting her sins? I’d rather she remain unrepentantly evil, much as I miss the innocent Nash from early issues. Solomon "Solly" Grundy, on the other hand, I will always see as a hero. True, he isn’t always, being different each time he dies and reemerges from the swamp, each Monday that he’s born bringing a new, usually evil or mindless personality. He’ll always be Solly to me, though. Good Grundy returns here to be Good Grundy once more, in one of the best stories in a consistently good series. Robinson works within genre conventions, erasing handicaps with a subtle flick of his wrist, to produce a tale that stands up as well in the superhero world as it would anywhere.
You’d think that would be it, that Grundy’s story would stand head and shoulders above the rest of the volume, but it’s arguably not the best of the lot. There’s the return of Jake "Bobo" Benetti, a former supervillain who, upon finishing up a long prison term, decides he’s better off on the inside and sets to robbing a bank while dozens of cops and Starman watch his every move. There’s The Mist’s story at the end, creepy as all get out, a carefully orchestrated, brutal plan executed because she "wanted to see if [she] could." There’s the main story, Infernal Devices, about a mad bomber who may not be mad but is certainly a bomber, and a terribly murderous one. The mystery of his doings runs through most of the trade. The Ghost Pirate emerges fully here as well, another background element brought to the forefront. He turns out to be The Black Pirate, like many of Starman‘s cast and guest stars, a character originally from the 1940’s. There’s another Talking with David, too, which is always good. This time, in addition to his dead brother, Jack speaks to several old heroes, most of them JSAers, who have passed on and not been resurrected. It’s not the strongest story in the trade, as Talking with David sometimes is. The old heroes are a little too nice, as is Jack to them. It makes sense, sure, but I enjoyed Jack’s disrespectful interaction with Batman more. They both acted like jerks, which sounds less fun than it was.
That’s not even everything of note. So much. There’s always so much going on, most of it entertaining in one way or another. Sad, funny, gripping, squee-inducing. It’s hard to overrate this series. I’d say it deserves a bit of hyperbole to offset the general disdain for all things nineties. It’s one of several reasons I can never wrap my head around that concept, that comics might be better off if we ditched everything from that decade. No way. Never.
Which is not to say this series, nor this volume, are perfect. There’s some awkward phrasing, some sloppy editing, ably countered by the many memorable lines and emotionally resonant scenes. Harris’ reliance on photoreference is a touch annoying at times. Some panels look like he asked a friend to pose for him and, although the friend, not being a professional actor or anything, did a poor job of capturing the desired look, Harris went with the result as though it were flawless. It stands out here more than in the first three volumes, as there are more fill-in artists with markedly different styles. When Harris’ figures aren’t being overly posey, he’s hard to top. Getting him back after enduring most of two issues with Yeowell’s flat, sparsely detailed art is a breath of fresh air.
Truncation
Birds of Prey – Great start to a great run.
Wonder Woman – Good Wondy is good Wondy.
Secret Six – One of DC’s best series. Typical Simone.
Catwoman – Worst retcon ever? We’ll see.
‘Mazing Man – Eh, s’ok.
Starman – So good. So very good.
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